Business
Corporate Canada betrayed capitalism. Now it has been betrayed
From the Fraser Institute
By Bruce Pardy
The original Battlestar Galactica, a campy space opera, debuted on network television in 1978. Canadian actor John Colicos played the traitor Baltar, who helps robot Cylons ambush human civilization. After humans have been almost wiped out, Baltar is hauled before the Cylons’ Imperious Leader. “What of our bargain?!” Baltar demands. “My colony was to be spared!” The Leader says he has altered the bargain. “How can you change one side of a bargain?!” Baltar spits, not getting it. “When there is no other side,” the robot tells him, “You have missed the entire point of the war. There can be no survivors.” “Surely,” Baltar stammers, finally understanding, “you don’t mean me.”
Corporate Canada should know the feeling. After years of colluding with climate hysteria and betraying capitalism, Canadian companies have been dumped at the curb.
On June 20, Bill C-59 received Royal Assent. It’s a hodgepodge bill of humdrum provisions, hundreds of pages long, related to last year’s spring federal budget and fall economic statement. But buried in the stack are two sections that prohibit “greenwashing.” Businesses cannot claim that their products or practices help to protect against climate change or provide other environmental benefits unless they can prove the claims are true. The provisions amend the Competition Act and make climate and other environmental claims subject to the same regulatory regime as false advertising.
Companies and industry associations have taken down climate pledges and environmental commitments from their websites and social media. “Ottawa’s ban on ‘greenwashing’ has already put a chill on climate disclosure targets,” objected Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, in a commentary for CTV. It will affect the entire economy, she wrote, add bureaucratic burden, halt investment, and weigh on Canada’s sagging productivity. Corporate Canada has lost its climate bargain.
Over the course of decades, Western countries, but nowhere more than Canada, have undergone a cultural revolution. Accelerating climate activism, aggressive social justice ideology and managerial government have changed the landscape. Business elites, instead of defending capitalism, competition, open markets, the rule of law and other values of Western civilization, decided to switch rather than fight. To protect their own prosperity and influence, corporate leaders learned to speak the language and adopt the norms of progressive collectivism. They became cheerleaders for the new regime. Many came to believe in it themselves.
Companies took on new roles. The social responsibility of business became not merely to increase its profits, as Milton Friedman famously insisted, but to serve as social welfare agencies. They were not just to obey the law and deliver products and services that people wanted to buy, but to pursue social and environmental causes. They would serve the interests not just of their shareholders but their “stakeholders,” as “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) models demanded.
In their marketing and rhetoric, they embraced climate action, corporate social responsibility, social licence, “equity, diversity and inclusion” (EDI) and social justice. They promoted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a blueprint for socialist managerialism. The Business Council of Canada endorsed carbon pricing and Canada’s climate plans. Major oil companies promoted net zero and repeated the kinds of claims that governments themselves made: that climate action in Canada helps to prevent the climate from changing.
Such claims are patently false. Even if you believe in anthropogenic climate change, if your country doesn’t contribute much to the problem, cutting its contribution isn’t a solution. Bringing Canadian carbon emissions to zero would make no measurable difference to anything. Countries that together produce far and away most of the emissions on Earth have no intention of changing their paths. And who can blame them? If I were them, I would do the same.
Canada excels at climate boondoggles. Carbon taxes are just more money for government coffers that do not necessarily reduce emissions, if that actually mattered.
Wind and solar power, a lucrative source of government largesse that some businesses have adeptly saddled up to, don’t replace fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage, perhaps the most pathetic pretend of them all, is a breathtakingly expensive symbolic gesture that cannot be applied at scale. The Paris accord and its net zero aspirations are climate fairy tales.
Canadian business leaders would never say any of this. That was the deal: pay homage to the climate gods, and you can be on the team. But now they can’t.
Progressive statism has never been about the climate, or transgenderism, or whatever the cause du jour. The target has always been Western values and principles. Free enterprise is anathema to its aspirations, and as it turns out, so is prosperity itself. Canadian companies have betrayed the economic principles of their own society. How does government change one side of a bargain? When there is no other side.
The Canadian business community still does not understand the point of the revolution. There can be no survivors. Surely, they sputter, you don’t mean us.
Author:
From the Montreal Economic Institute
The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.
“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”
Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.
Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.
In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.
It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.
The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.
The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.
In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.
A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.
The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:
- What is the purpose of the regulation?
- Does it serve the public interest?
- What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
- What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
- Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
- Is there a net benefit?
According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.
“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”
The MEI Viewpoint is available here.
* * *
The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
This article supplied by Troy Media.
By Ian Madsen
From overstaffed departments to subsidy giveaways, Canadians are paying a high price for government excess
Canada’s federal spending is growing, deficits are mounting, and waste is going unchecked. As governments look for ways to control costs, some experts say Canada needs a dedicated agency to root out inefficiency—before it’s too late
Not all the Trump administration’s policies are dubious. One is very good, in theory at least: the Department of Government Efficiency. While that
term could be an oxymoron, like ‘political wisdom,’ if DOGE proves useful, a Canadian version might be, too.
DOGE aims to identify wasteful, duplicative, unnecessary or destructive government programs and replace outdated data systems. It also seeks to
lower overall costs and ensure mechanisms are in place to evaluate proposed programs for effectiveness and value for money. This can, and often does, involve eliminating departments and, eventually, thousands of jobs. Some new roles within DOGE may need to become permanent.
The goal in the U.S. is to reduce annual operating costs and ensure government spending grows more slowly than revenues. Washington’s spending has exploded in recent years. The U.S. federal deficit now exceeds six per cent of gross domestic product. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of servicing that debt is rising at an unsustainable rate.
Canada’s latest budget deficit of $61.9 billion in fiscal 2023-24 amounts to about two per cent of GDP—less alarming than our neighbour’s situation, but still significant. It adds to the federal debt of $1.236 trillion, about 41 per cent of our estimated $3 trillion GDP. Ottawa’s public accounts show expenses at 17.8 per cent of GDP, up from about 14 per cent just eight years ago. Interest on the growing debt accounted for 9.1 per cent of
revenues in the most recent fiscal year, up from five per cent just two years ago.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) consistently highlights dubious spending, outright waste and extravagant programs: “$30 billion in subsidies to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt. Federal corporate subsidies totalled $11.2 billion in 2022 alone. Shutting down the federal government’s seven regional development agencies would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion annually.”
The CTF also noted that Ottawa hired 108,000 additional staff over the past eight years, at an average annual cost of more than $125,000 each. Hiring based on population growth alone would have added just 35,500 staff, saving about $9 billion annually. The scale of waste is staggering. Canada Post, the CBC and Via Rail collectively lose more than $5 billion a year. For reference, $1 billion could buy Toyota RAV4s for over 25,600 families.
Ottawa also duplicates functions handled by provincial governments, often stepping into areas of constitutional provincial jurisdiction. Shifting federal programs in health, education, environment and welfare to the provinces could save many more billions annually. Poor infrastructure decisions have also cost Canadians dearly—most notably the $33.4 billion blown on what should have been a relatively simple expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Better project management and staffing could have prevented that disaster. Federal IT systems are another money pit, as shown by the $4-billion Phoenix payroll debacle. Then there’s the Green Slush Fund, which misallocated nearly $900 million.
Even more worrying, the rapidly expanding Old Age Supplement and Guaranteed Income Security programs are unfunded, unlike the Canada Pension Plan. Their combined cost is already roughly equal to the federal deficit and could soon become unmanageable.
Canada is sleepwalking toward financial ruin. A Canadian version of DOGE—Canada Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Team, or CAETT—is urgently needed. The Office of the Auditor General does an admirable job identifying waste and poor performance, but it’s not proactive and lacks enforcement powers. At present, there is no mechanism in place to evaluate or eliminate ineffective programs. CAETT could fill that gap and help secure a prosperous future for Canadians.
Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
The views, opinions, and positions expressed by our columnists and contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of our publication.
© Troy Media
Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.
In Defeat, Joe Tay’s Campaign Becomes a Flashpoint for Suspected Voter Intimidation in Canada
Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s
Governments in Alberta should spur homebuilding amid population explosion
History in the making? Trump, Zelensky hold meeting about Ukraine war in Vatican ahead of Francis’ funeral
“Freedom of Expression Should Win Every Time”: In Conversation with Freedom Convoy Trial Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon
Columnist warns Carney Liberals will consider a home equity tax on primary residences
Yet another struggling soldier says Veteran Affairs Canada offered him euthanasia
-
Business2 days agoTrump’s bizarre 51st state comments and implied support for Carney were simply a ploy to blow up trilateral trade pact
-
Frontier Centre for Public Policy2 days agoTrust but verify: Why COVID-19 And Kamloops Claims Demand Scientific Scrutiny
-
Alberta1 day agoAlberta’s future in Canada depends on Carney’s greatest fear: Trump or Climate Change
-
Business2 days agoNew federal government plans to run larger deficits and borrow more money than predecessor’s plan
-
Business2 days agoScott Bessent says U.S., Ukraine “ready to sign” rare earths deal
-
International2 days agoJavier Millei declassifies 1850+ files on Nazi leaders in Argentina
-
Bjorn Lomborg2 days agoHow Canada Can Respond to Climate Change Smartly
-
Agriculture1 day agoLiberal win puts Canada’s farmers and food supply at risk